There was no ground beneath him at first, only twisting purple light, a rush of distorted air, and the horrible sensation of being pulled through space with no control over where his body would land. The portal swallowed sound strangely. Malachi’s name tore from his throat, but the darkness around him crushed the word until it became nothing. For a breath, he saw only flashes: Jayiden’s purple cloak tumbling nearby, the gleam of twin jagged katanas, his own golden sand scattering away from him as the cyclone collapsed under the portal’s pull.

Then the world spat him out.

He hit snow hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.

Cold swallowed him instantly.

Shunjiro rolled across the ground, shoulder first, then back, then side, the impact sending pain ripping through the wound Jayiden had carved into him. His hand flew to his left side, fingers clamping over the injury as a strangled gasp tore from his mouth. The sand inside the wound was still working, grain by grain, forcing torn flesh to close, but the cold made every sensation sharper. The pain burned beneath his palm while the air around him froze his breath in his throat.

Wind screamed over him.

Snow struck his face in vicious sheets, so thick and fast he could barely tell which direction was up. The Shadow Realm’s black sky was gone. The dead forest was gone. Malachi was gone. In every direction, there was only white, moving so violently that the world seemed to have been erased and replaced with a storm.

Shunjiro pushed himself to one knee, coughing as freezing air stabbed into his lungs.

“Malachi!” he shouted.

The wind stole the name before it could travel far.

He forced himself upright, swaying. His cloak snapped behind him, the dark fabric Malachi had given him doing what it could to hold warmth against his body. Without it, he knew the cold would have gone through him immediately. Even with it, his fingers were already going numb, and the wound in his side throbbed like his body was trying to remind him that surviving the portal did not mean surviving what came after.

A shape moved through the snow nearby.

Shunjiro’s hand went to the Devil’s Luck Dagger.

Jayiden rose from the storm a few yards away, shaking snow from his cloak and hair. His beastkin ears were flattened against the wind, his tail whipping behind him before he steadied it. Small wounds marked his arms and shoulder where Shunjiro’s hardened sand had pierced him, but none looked deep enough to slow him much. His fur gave him more protection than Shunjiro had, yet even Jayiden’s jaw was tight from the cold.

The two stared at each other through the whiteout.

Shunjiro unsheathed the dagger halfway.

Jayiden noticed and narrowed his golden eyes.

“Put that away.”

Shunjiro tightened his grip instead. “You first.”

Jayiden looked around, scanning the storm with clear irritation, then sheathed one katana with a sharp motion. The second remained loose in his hand for a moment before he slid it away too.

Shunjiro did not lower the dagger.

Jayiden clicked his tongue. “If I wanted to keep fighting, I would have done it before you got to your feet.”

“That is supposed to make me trust you?”

“No. How about you use your brain?”

Shunjiro’s breath came out in harsh white clouds. Snow collected on his hair and shoulders almost as fast as the wind tore it away. He glanced past Jayiden, trying to make sense of their surroundings, but there were no trees visible, no rocks, no road, no landmark that lasted longer than a heartbeat before the snow swallowed it.

“Where are we?” Shunjiro asked.

Jayiden turned his head into the wind, eyes narrowed against the storm. “Random.”

Shunjiro stared at him. “Random?”

“Tsubasa messed up the coordinates.”

Shunjiro blinked, thrown by the answer. “He can do that?”

Jayiden looked at him like the question annoyed him. “He was trying to escape before Malachi cut him in half. Yes, apparently, he can mess up.”

Shunjiro processed that slowly.

Tsubasa Astoria, the man who had moved through space as if distance itself belonged to him, had made a mistake. It meant Malachi had hurt him badly enough to break that effortless control, badly enough that even Tsubasa had panicked. But comfort did not come. If Tsubasa had lost control of the portal, then Shunjiro had not been sent to an enemy base or another planned trap.

He had been thrown somewhere unknown with Jayiden.

In the middle of a storm that could kill them both.

Shunjiro grimaced as another wave of pain pulsed through his side. He pressed his palm harder against the wound and pushed spiritual energy into it. More golden sand slipped from his skin and packed into the injury, reinforcing what had already begun to close. He felt the grains shift beneath blood and torn muscle, rough and deep, a sickening sensation he forced himself to endure. 

Jayiden watched him briefly, then looked away.

“You are going to freeze if you stand there staring at me.”

Shunjiro’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you not attacking me?”

Jayiden gave him a flat look. “Because attacking you is pointless.”

“That did not stop you before.”

“Before, Tsubasa needed you out of the way,” Jayiden said, turning his shoulder into the wind as another blast of snow tore between them. “That was simple. This is not.”

Shunjiro’s eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Jayiden looked toward the storm, then back at him. “It means I am not wasting strength on a fight the weather is already winning. You bleed out, freeze, collapse, or keep walking. Right now, only one of those choices helps me too. If I wanted you dead, I could let it kill you.” Jayiden’s expression did not soften. “I have no orders to kill you, and I do not plan on dying out here because I was stupid enough to keep fighting in a snowstorm.”

The practicality of it made Shunjiro hesitate.

He could not afford to reject help just because he hated the situation.

Do not trust him. Work with him.

Shunjiro slid the dagger back into its sheath, but he kept his hand close.

Jayiden noticed and seemed almost satisfied by the caution.

“Where do you think we are?” Shunjiro asked.

“Cosmic Continent.”

Shunjiro looked around at the blinding storm. “Because of the snow?”

“Because snowstorms like this do not happen anywhere else at this scale.” Jayiden pulled his cloak tighter around himself, though his voice stayed sharp. “I have never been here, but I know maps. Cosmic sits north and east from where we were, depending on where the portal threw us.”

“If this is the Cosmic Continent,” Shunjiro said, raising his voice over the wind, “how do we get back?”

Jayiden pointed into the storm.

“West.”

Shunjiro followed the direction of his hand and saw nothing but snow.

“You can tell where west is in this?”

“Barely.” Jayiden lowered his arm. “Wind direction. Terrain slope. Portal orientation before we fell out. It is not perfect, but it is better than standing here.”

“And west gets us where?”

“The Shadow Realm.”

Shunjiro stared at him. “You want to go back into the Shadow Realm?”

Jayiden’s eyes hardened. “The Shadow Realm sits between the continents. If we go west far enough, we hit the barrier. Once we are through it, we can move toward the Light Continent. Unless you have a better plan.”

Shunjiro did not.

He hated that.

The Shadow Realm had been dangerous, but Malachi had been there. The mansion had been there. A path home had existed because someone stronger walked beside him. Now that same realm was their best chance of escape, and Malachi had no idea where they were.

Shunjiro pushed the thought away before it could pull him under.

“How far?” he asked.

Jayiden gave a short, humorless laugh. “No idea.”

“Great.”

The wind surged again, nearly forcing him back a step. His cloak whipped around his legs, and snow stung his eyes until he had to lower his head. Even Jayiden braced against it. For all his fur and beastkin endurance, the storm was too brutal to ignore. His ears flattened further, and his tail wrapped closer to his body beneath the cloak as much as it could.

Shunjiro took a shaky breath.

“Can we find shelter first?”

Jayiden scanned the whiteout. “If we see any. But wandering in circles looking for shelter will kill us faster. We move west and take whatever cover appears.”

Shunjiro looked down at his wounded side. The sand had slowed the bleeding to a thin seep beneath his hand, but every step would hurt. He would have to keep energy flowing into the wound while walking, which meant draining himself in freezing conditions with an enemy beside him and no way to know what waited ahead.

He almost laughed.

The sound came out as a breathless shiver.

Jayiden glanced at him. “What?”

“Nothing.” Shunjiro forced himself to stand straighter. “Just thinking this was supposed to be the start of my trip home.”

“It still is.”

Shunjiro looked at him through the storm.

Jayiden’s expression remained hard. “It is just worse now.”

Shunjiro stared for a moment, then shook his head. “You are really bad at encouragement.”

“I was not encouraging you.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

Jayiden turned away. “Stay close enough to see me. If you fall behind, I am not carrying you.”

Shunjiro stepped after him, jaw tightening as pain flared through his side. “I did not ask you to.”

“Good.”

“And Jayiden?”

The beastkin paused without turning fully.

“If you try anything, I will fight.”

Jayiden looked back, golden eyes cutting through the snow.

“I know.” A faint smirk touched his face, cold and brief. “That is why this is not completely boring.”

Then he faced west and began walking.

Shunjiro followed.

For a while, only the blizzard spoke.

Shunjiro tried to focus on walking. Lift his foot. Plant it. Keep the wound compressed. Breathe through the scarf of his cloak without letting the icy air stab too deeply into his lungs. The world around them had become nothing but white movement and gray shadows, a place without a sky or horizon. He could not tell if they were crossing flat ground or climbing a gradual slope until his legs started to burn. Somewhere beneath the storm, there had to be land, roads, forests, mountains, villages, something that belonged to the Cosmic Continent. But the snow hid everything.

He hated how much he had to rely on Jayiden.

After another stretch of silence, Shunjiro raised his voice over the wind. “How did you join them?”

Jayiden did not answer.

Shunjiro waited, watching the back of his cloak ripple and snap. He expected a sharp insult or some cold dismissal, but Jayiden gave him nothing. The question disappeared into the storm, and for several minutes, they kept walking as if Shunjiro had never spoken.

That should have been the end of it.

But then Jayiden said, “Renjiro.”

Shunjiro nearly stopped walking.

He caught himself before the reaction became obvious, forcing his feet to keep moving through the snow. Renjiro. The name hit him with the weight of Kaito’s report, Makoto’s kidnapping, slave traders, and the dangerous thread that had run beneath everything long before Shunjiro understood how wide the world really was. He kept his face turned down against the wind so Jayiden would not see the sudden focus in his eyes.

“What about him?” Shunjiro asked, keeping his voice as even as he could.

“He found me,” Jayiden said. “Offered me a way in.”

“To Eclipsed Abyss?”

“Yes.”

Shunjiro watched him carefully. “And you just accepted?”

Jayiden let out a short sound that might have been a laugh if it had carried even a trace of humor. “I did not join because I liked them.”

“Then why?”

The beastkin slowed slightly, not enough to stop, but enough that Shunjiro almost caught up to him. His golden eyes stayed fixed ahead, narrowed against the storm.

“My home was slaughtered by one man,” Jayiden said.

The bluntness of it stole the next words from Shunjiro.

Jayiden kept walking. “There were bodies everywhere. People I knew. People who had nothing to do with anything. It did not matter. Whoever he was, he cut through all of them like they were grass in his path.”

Shunjiro knew better than to offer pity. Not to Jayiden. Not when the beastkin’s voice had gone so flat that it sounded like he had scraped all emotion out of himself by force. 

“I do not know his name,” Jayiden continued. “I do not know where he came from. I do not know if he was an adventurer, a criminal, a soldier, or something worse. The only thing I remember clearly is a silver earring.”

Shunjiro looked at him through the veil of snow.

Jayiden’s jaw tightened. “That is all I have. A dead home and one piece of silver hanging from a killer’s ear.”

The wind surged between them so violently that Shunjiro had to brace himself. Snow blasted across his eyes, blinding him completely, and for a moment Jayiden vanished into white. Shunjiro forced himself forward, one arm raised to shield his face, until Jayiden’s shape reappeared a few steps ahead. Shunjiro moved closer than he wanted to, close enough that they could hear each other without shouting so hard their throats tore raw.

Jayiden glanced at him. “Still breathing?”

Shunjiro pressed harder against his side. “Unfortunately for you.”

“If it was unfortunate, I would have fixed it.”

The wind dropped just enough for them to continue. Shunjiro followed, keeping the conversation in his mind like another source of heat, something to focus on besides the cold.

“So Renjiro offered you power,” Shunjiro said.

“He offered access,” Jayiden corrected. “Power is something I will take for myself.”

“And what about the entrance exams?”

“That was his condition.” Jayiden’s cloak snapped as he adjusted it over one shoulder. “If I wanted in, I had to become an official adventurer in Radiance. Pass the exams. Get placed. Gain access to places, records, requests, reports. There is information locked behind status. Adventurers hear things normal people do not.”

Shunjiro felt the meaning settle slowly, and when it did, the cold seemed to sink even deeper.

Jayiden had not simply fallen into Eclipsed Abyss after the exams.

He had entered the exams already carrying their purpose.

The entrance exams, Kaito’s squad, the early missions, the training, all of it had happened with Jayiden standing among them as someone planted there for another organization. Shunjiro thought back to those days: Jayiden’s silence, his anger, his distance from the group, the way he never truly seemed to belong even when he stood beside them. At the time, Shunjiro had thought he was just difficult. Now the memory shifted into something far more unsettling.

“How much did you give them?” Shunjiro asked.

Jayiden’s eyes cut toward him. “Enough.”

Shunjiro let the silence stretch for a few steps, then asked the question he could not hold back. “Makoto. Do you know that name?”

Jayiden’s gaze sharpened, but not with recognition of Shunjiro’s reaction. More like irritation at another question. “Makoto is new.”

Shunjiro’s fingers curled against his cloak. “New?”

“Recently brought in. Recruited, taken, whatever word makes people feel better.” Jayiden looked ahead again. “I have not spoken to him much.”

Shunjiro kept his face still.

Inside, his thoughts moved quickly.

Makoto was with them. Not just kidnapped. Not just missing. Jayiden called him a new member, though the way he said recruited made it sound like the difference between joining and being taken did not matter much inside Eclipsed Abyss. He wondered how many threads had been moving through Radiance from the beginning while he and his friends were still trying to become adventurers.

Eclipsed Abyss had not simply appeared in his life at the Coastal Kingdom.

They had been reaching into it long before that.

Shunjiro swallowed the thought and forced himself to keep walking.

“You said you are using them,” he said.

Jayiden’s mouth twitched. “I said I joined for power. I do not trust Renjiro. I do not trust Tsubasa. I do not trust any of them. They have resources, training, information, and monsters strong enough to measure myself against. I will take what I need. When I am strong enough, I leave. Then I find the man with the earring and kill him.”

Shunjiro knew rage when it burned hot. Jayiden’s did not. His had cooled into something harder, packed down so tightly that it no longer needed to flare. It simply existed inside him as direction. A straight path drawn through anything in the way.

“And the leader?” Shunjiro asked.

Jayiden stopped.

This time, it was not because of the storm.

Something like fear touched his face. It was quick, almost buried beneath annoyance, but Shunjiro saw it. The ears that had been pressed down against the wind shifted slightly. His shoulders went still. 

“I have never met the leader,” Jayiden said.

His voice was quieter now.

“But you know something.”

Jayiden’s laugh came out low and uneven. It tried to sound mocking and failed. “I know what I felt.”

Shunjiro waited.

Jayiden looked ahead again, but his posture stayed tense. “Renjiro brought me to their headquarters. I did not see the leader’s face. I did not stand in front of him. I was not even in the same room, I think. But his aura was there, spread through the place like it had soaked into the walls.”

The snow hissed around them.

Jayiden’s voice dropped further. “No human feels like that.”

A chill moved through Shunjiro that had nothing to do with the weather.

“You said his aura?”

“I said it because I do not know what else to call it.” Jayiden’s hand flexed near one katana. “And I should not have said that much.”

Shunjiro studied him. “You think he can hear us?”

Jayiden did not answer right away.

Then he said, “I think things like that do not need to be nearby to notice when their name is dragged through the dark.”

The storm filled the space between them.

Shunjiro had more questions. Too many. What did the headquarters look like? Where was it? How many members had Jayiden seen? What did the leader want? Why would someone with an aura that frightened Jayiden need recruits, spies, or broken people chasing revenge?

But Jayiden’s face had closed off completely.

“I am done talking about him,” the beastkin said.

Shunjiro did not argue.

The two of them continued west.

A massive shadow stretched across the blizzard where no tree or mountain should have stood so cleanly. He blinked hard and forced himself forward another few steps. The shape did not vanish. Instead, it grew clearer with every painful breath, rising higher and wider until it became impossible to mistake for anything natural.

Shunjiro stopped in the snow, staring upward as much as the storm allowed. The structure climbed so high that its upper edge disappeared into the whiteout, with enormous towers spaced along it like silent giants watching over a land he could not see. The stones were dark beneath layers of frost, each block larger than a wagon, stacked with a precision that made the wall look less built and more carved from the bones of the continent itself. No banners were visible. No guards called down. No torchlight guided them. There was only the endless barrier, the snow hammering against it, and the sudden, impossible relief of finding something made by human hands.

Shelter.

The thought hit Shunjiro so strongly that his knees nearly weakened. His side throbbed beneath the packed golden sand, his fingers had gone stiff, and every inch of him felt scraped raw by cold. Whatever waited beyond that wall, it had to be better than freezing to death in the open.

Jayiden did not look relieved.

The beastkin had gone completely still a few steps ahead, his face turned toward the wall with a tension Shunjiro had not seen from him even when speaking about Eclipsed Abyss’s leader. He moved closer to the stone, brushing snow away from a section near shoulder height. Beneath the frost, a carved design emerged: a star with long, sharp points, etched deep into the wall as if it had been there for centuries.

Jayiden’s expression hardened.

“Damn it.”

Shunjiro looked from him to the symbol. “You know this place?”

Jayiden backed away from the wall as if the stone itself had become dangerous. “We need to leave.”

“What?” Shunjiro almost laughed, but the cold stole most of the sound. “Leave? This is the first thing we have found that is not snow.”

“That is why we need to leave.”

“That makes no sense.”

Jayiden turned on him, eyes sharp through the storm. “This is the outer wall of the Stellar Empire.”

“The Stellar Empire?” Shunjiro repeated.

“The capital kingdom of the Cosmic Continent,” Jayiden said. “A kingdom on the same level as Radiance. Its ruler is one of the eight Great Kings.”

Shunjiro looked up at the wall again. The towers vanished into the storm, their tops hidden so completely that they seemed to continue forever. A Great King ruled beyond that stone. A kingdom as powerful as Radiance stood on the other side, close enough that he could almost imagine warmth, food, healers, and a roof strong enough to silence the wind.

“We should go in,” Shunjiro said.

Jayiden stared at him like he had just suggested walking into a monster’s mouth. “No.”

“I am not going to survive much longer out here.”

“You might not survive in there either.”

“They have shelter.”

“They also question outsiders.” Jayiden’s voice dropped. “The Stellar Empire is not some roadside village that lets strangers stumble through the gate and ask for soup. They will want names. Origins. Why we are here. How we arrived. Where we came from. I want nothing to do with that.”

Shunjiro understood then.

It was not the cold that scared Jayiden. It was attention.

The purple cloak. Eclipsed Abyss. Renjiro. Tsubasa. Everything Jayiden had admitted in the storm would become dangerous the moment someone powerful started asking the right questions. And if a Great King’s kingdom learned even a piece of it, Eclipsed Abyss might no longer remain a hidden shadow moving beneath the world’s surface.

Shunjiro glanced along the wall, searching for any hint of a gate through the snow. He saw none, but walls this large had entrances somewhere. If he followed it long enough, he might find one. He might be questioned. He might be imprisoned. He might be thrown into another kind of danger.

But he would be alive long enough for those problems to matter.

Jayiden adjusted his cloak and stepped away from the stone. “We keep moving west. Now.”

Shunjiro did not follow.

Jayiden took three steps before noticing, then looked back with visible irritation. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

“I am staying.”

The beastkin’s eyes narrowed. “You really are that stupid.”

“Maybe.” Shunjiro pressed a hand to his side, feeling the wound pulse beneath his palm. “But I can barely feel my hands. My wound is still open enough to hurt every time I move. I do not know this continent, and I can barely see five steps in front of me. If there is a kingdom here, I am going to try reaching it.”

“And if they ask about me?”

“I will not mention you unless I have to.”

Jayiden barked out a humorless laugh. “That is not reassuring.”

“It is the truth.”

“The truth gets people killed.”

“So does walking into a blizzard forever.”

Shunjiro could feel the choice hardening in the air. If he went with Jayiden, they might reach the Shadow Realm. They might not. If he entered the Stellar Empire, he would be stepping into a nation he knew nothing about, ruled by someone strong enough to be counted among the Great Kings.

But he had spent too much time being carried by other people’s plans.

Tsubasa’s portals.

Malachi’s protection.

Jayiden’s direction through the storm.

This choice, at least, would be his.

Jayiden studied him for another few seconds, then clicked his tongue and looked away. “Fine.”

Shunjiro blinked. “Fine?”

“It is probably better this way.” Jayiden’s tone stayed harsh, but the anger in it had settled into practicality. “You are slowing down. You would not make the rest of the trip unless we found shelter soon, and I do not need one of the Great Kings finding out that Eclipsed Abyss had a member walking around outside their walls.”

“You are just going to leave?”

“That was always going to happen.”

Shunjiro should have expected that answer, but something about it still landed heavily. He and Jayiden were not friends. They might never become friends. Jayiden had stabbed him, insulted him, and admitted to standing with people Shunjiro considered enemies. But he had also chosen not to kill him in the snow, had led him through the storm, and had told him enough truth to make Eclipsed Abyss feel more dangerous than it had before.

“Jayiden.”

The beastkin paused, though his body remained angled away.

Shunjiro took a breath, the cold scraping his lungs. “Thanks.”

Jayiden looked back slowly.

“For helping me survive,” Shunjiro added. “I know you did it because it helped you too. Still. Thank you.”

Jayiden stared at him for a long moment, his golden eyes unreadable beneath the snow collecting in his hair. Then his mouth twisted in annoyance.

“Idiot.”

Shunjiro gave a tired, faint smile. “Good luck finding the man with the earring.”

Jayiden’s expression changed so slightly that Shunjiro almost missed it. A flicker of something sharp passed through his eyes, not gratitude, not softness, but a reminder that beneath every insult and every cold answer, his goal still burned.

Then he turned and walked away.

No farewell.

No last warning.

No promise that their paths would cross again.

Jayiden moved into the storm with his cloak snapping behind him, his shape fading step by step until the whiteout took him completely. One moment he was there, a dark figure cutting across the snow beside the enormous wall. The next, there was nothing but wind and distance.

Shunjiro stood alone.

The silence that followed was not true silence. The storm still roared, and the wall still caught the wind with a deep, constant moan. But without Jayiden’s footsteps ahead of him, the world felt wider and emptier than it had a moment before.

He turned toward the wall.

The carved star was half-buried in frost again, its points disappearing under fresh snow. Somewhere beyond this stone was the Stellar Empire, a kingdom he had never heard of until minutes ago. Somewhere inside might be warmth, answers, danger, or another path entirely. He did not know if entering would bring him closer to Radiance or drag him further into a world larger than he was ready to understand.

But standing still would kill him.

Shunjiro pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, pressed one hand against his wounded side, and began walking along the wall in search of an entrance.

The towers vanished above him.

The storm erased his tracks behind him.

And with Jayiden gone, Shunjiro continued forward alone.